Note: Since the final question was un-answered, I treated it as disagree due to the way the quiz is scored with 20 points for Agree, 10 points for Maybe, and 0 points for Disagree. I just didn’t want to skew it by giving points for a non-answer.

Personal Issues

Government should not censor speech, press, media, or internet. – Agree

Military service should be voluntary. There should be no draft. – Agree

There should be no laws regarding sex for consenting adults. – Agree

Repeal laws prohibiting adult possession and use of drugs. – Disagree

There should be no National ID card. – Agree

Economic Issues

End “corporate welfare.” No government handouts to business. – Maybe

Creating more and better jobs to grow our economy and restore economic prosperity is my top priority. I am dedicated to creating jobs, particularly to foster small business growth, fund essential services, to help promote neighborhood safety, support our schools, and provide everyone with effective, responsive constituent service.

End government barriers to international free trade. – Maybe

Let people control their own retirement; privatize Social Security. – Maybe

“The devil is in the details” of any plan to privatize Social Security.

With that in mind, I obtained the campaign email addresses for all of the candidates in this year’s Columbus City Council and Columbus Mayor’s race. I wanted to find Columbus School Board candidate emails as well but too few of them had phone, email, or websites listed.

I’m listing the candidates, WSPQ score (if they responded to my request – a perfect score is 100/100 on Personal/Economic freedoms) and their campaign Twitter and email accounts in case you’d like to ask them questions before you cast your vote. Candidates who responded will also have a clickable name with details of their response.

Each year as election time nears, I take some time to research the candidates. There are a number of great resources – probably one of the most detailed is the candidate questionnaire provided in the county League of Women Voters Voter Information Bulletin.

The LWV survey asks a few specific questions and I encourage you to review their responses, but I wanted to get a more general feel for their overarching mindset – a better glimpse into how they are likely to make decisions as they serve.

This is the list of questions I posed to each of them:

Personal Issues

Government should not censor speech, press, media, or internet.

Military service should be voluntary. There should be no draft.

There should be no laws regarding sex for consenting adults.

Repeal laws prohibiting adult possession and use of drugs.

There should be no National ID card.

Economic Issues

End “corporate welfare.” No government handouts to business.

End government barriers to international free trade.

Let people control their own retirement; privatize Social Security.

Replace government welfare with private charity.

Cut taxes and government spending by 50% or more.

You may recognize the questions from the World’s Smallest Political Quiz, which I recommend taking yourself so you can see how similar your views are to those of the candidates.

So, over the next few weeks, as the responses trickle in, I’m going to try to share their results with you – to help you inform your own decisions with regard to these candidates. It will also serve as a bit of an archive since candidates views change. If I ask them again in a later election it will be interesting to see how their views changed on these key issues.

If a candidate doesn’t specifically say whether they agree or disagree with one of the questions, I’ll be treating those as “Maybe” responses.

Here’s a list of the offices and candidates I emailed the survey to on 10/2/2013 (I’ll be linking the names to their responses as I receive them – no link means no response):

Pat Tiberi refused to answer the questions on 10/10/2012. Here’s what his campaign had to say:

Mr. Noble,

Thank you for contacting us and for your interest in Congressman Tiberi’s candidacy. As you might imagine, with over 700,000 people residing in the 12th congressional district, it’s not possible for us to respond to individual surveys. We believe that Congressman Tiberi’s long voting record, the many media voter guides he has completed and the countless news and interest group resources, make information about his positions readily available to any interested voter.